Wild Code Chase
by kassidanae
Summary: Nell mysteriously finds a note with a secret code and a message telling her to find out what the secret message is. What she finds may have been better then what she expected.


Nell took a deep breath, puffed out her cheeks, and let the air out slowly. She and Eric had (finally) cracked the code that they had been working on for the past thirty-six hours. Without sleep. And they were both utterly exhausted. Nell, glancing at the clock, decided to close her eyes for just a second. She'd get up and go back to work in five minutes…

Forty-five minutes later, Nell opened her eyes. Her head was still resting on her arms. Her arms were still resting on her desk. She was still in ops. But she was also covered with a tourist black and white 'NCIS' blanket. Next to her phone was a typed piece of paper saying, 'Nell—figure out the clues to learn the secret message. Clue 1: LEUBPNL.'

Rubbing her eyes again, Nell glanced back at the letters. "What the hell?" she whispered. She tried changing the letters to numbers. Nothing. She tried figuring out the inverse of the letter. Nope. In the next thirty minutes she had tried at least fifteen different ways to change the odd series of letters into a message. She was concentrating so hard that she didn't hear Kensi walk in.

"Hey Nell, whatcha doing?" she asked.

Nell shrugged. "I'm not sure. It's supposed to be a code of a word of some sort. I'm supposed to figure out the secret message or something." She held the paper up to Kensi.

"It looks like one of those word-warp games, where you have to rearrange the letters to form a word." Kensi commented. She took a pen and started writing words on the paper. "Hmmm… Pull… Bull… Null… Ben…" she paused and laughed. "You're name's in here." She wrote down 'Nell' before continuing on. "Up… Bell… Pen…"

Nell looked at the word list. "Bullpen!" she cried out. "That uses all the letters, and it's a place I would go."

Kensi looked at the paper, smirked at Nell, and then wordlessly walked towards the door. Nell followed and they ended up in the bullpen. At the base of the stairs was a poster that said '_WILL_' on it. On the back was another code: 7275.

"Numbers," Kensi began, "I cannot help you with." She laughed and walked off towards the shooting range. Nell stared at this code for a while before noticing Deeks walk in.

"Hey Deeks." Nell said. He glanced up at her. "How are you with number codes?"

He shrugged. "Not great. I thought that was your area of expertise." He teased.

"Yeah, but look at this." She showed him the code.

"Ask Eric." He shrugged. "Sorry I can't help you." He pulled out his phone and started texting someone. That gave Nell an idea.

"Hey Deeks, type '7275' into your text. Using the number keypad." She said.

He did as she asked. "Park. What, do you think this means the parking lot or something?"

Nell smirked and shook her head. "No. There's this park just down the street that I like to go read at after work. I bet it's there." Because it was such a short distance, Nell walked. At her favorite bench was another sign. This one said, '_YOU_' on the front and '19-20-1-18-2-21-3-11-19.'

Nell laughed. This was the easiest code ever invented to crack. 19 was S, 20 was T, 1 was A, 18 was R, 2 was B, 2 was C, 11 was K, and 19 was, again, S. Starbucks. With a grin on her face, Nell headed to the nearest Starbucks.

When she walked in, there was yet another poster at her usual table. This one said, '_GO_.' Turning it over she read, '24-26-21-22.' At first she tried the same code—XZUV. Definitely not it.

"Hey, Nell." Callen said. He was holding coffee in his hand. Sam was standing right behind him holding his own coffee. "What're you doing here?" he asked.

"I've been sent on this while code-solving goose chase. Because I haven't solved enough codes in the past few hours." She said sarcastically.

Sam laughed. "Are they really so hard? I saw the code you were trying to get last night. On second thought," he added, "you're probably over-thinking it. What's the code?" Nell read him the numbers and told him the previous clues.

"What if you tried it backwards?" Callen asked. "I used it all the time while passing notes in class. Every teacher tried 'A' as 1 and 'B' as 2 and so forth, but they never think to try 26 as 'A' and 'B' as 25."

Nell studied the code. "Café." She smiled. "Thanks a ton, guys!" she exclaimed before rushing out. There was this café down the street from Starbucks, really close to the Ops center. She loved going there after work, and had taken Kensi and Eric with her on certain occasions.

But when Nell walked in, she was disappointed to see there was no poster with no clue and no message. Although disappointed, Nell ordered her favorite sandwich seeing as it was almost twelve-thirty. When she received her sandwich, written on it was, '_OUT_.' On the inside of the paper wrapping it said, 'We've been blocked.'

Puzzled over this, but happy that her last clue had indeed been right, she walked back to ops and her desk.

"Hey Nell." Eric said as she walked in. "Where've you been?"

"Out following these clues and messages. So far I have 'Will you go out,' but who with I'm still not sure on." She shrugged. "And I got through the number codes alright. But I have had help, seeing as I'm exhausted from less than an hour of sleep. I can do number codes fine. But word riddles? I'm stuck." She sunk down into her chair and explained the whole story.

Against his better judgment, Eric decided to help her. "Let me take a look." She handed it to him and he read it over. "Hmmm. Blocked. We're been blocked…" he thought about it. "You said they knew where your favorite park, Starbucks, and café are right? So this person obviously knows you very well, which means that this probably has a different meaning than we think."

Nell nodded, catching on. "Like, a nerd-ier meaning. Something that I would understand." She studied the paper. "We've been blocked, stopped, ended, tricked…"

"Stonewalled!" Eric exclaimed. "We've been stonewalled!"

Nell grinned and hugged him. "The rock wall! Thanks Eric!" and she flounced out of the room.

When she arrived at the rock wall, Kensi and Deeks were having a competition to see who could reach the top the fastest. Kensi was winning, so Deeks had resorted to trying to grad her rope and ankles to slow her down. Nell giggled and say the poster propped up against the wall.

This one said, '_WITH_' and 'ordinary pleasant surprise.' Confused, she watched as Deeks and Kensi made their way down the wall.

"Need help?" Kensi asked.

Nell sat down on the ground and nodded. "Yeah, I'm too tired to do this." She jokingly complained.

Deeks and Kensi kneeled behind her, looking at the note over her shoulder. "Ordinary pleasant surprise." Kensi repeated.

Deeks laughed. "That reminds me of the OWLs in Harry Potter."

Nell turned to give him a disbelieving look.

"What? Ordinary Wizarding Levels, O-W-L. It makes sense. God Nell, haven't you read Harry Potter?" he teased.

Nell bit her bottom lip excitedly. "Ordinary Pleasant Surprise. OPS. Ops!" Nell said eagerly. "Thanks Kensi, Deeks. You guys are the best!" and she took off up the stairs.

But when she arrived in ops it was empty. No person was there waiting for her, no more posters were waiting. Nothing. Dejectedly, Nell fell into her computer chair, completely exhausted from so little sleep and running around town all day.

"Nell?" Eric asked.

"What?" she replied grouchily, still staring at her blank computer screen.

"Turn around." He said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. When Nell turned around, she saw that Eric was holding a white piece of paper. She grinned widely when she saw what the paper read.

'_Me_.'

* * *

><p>Eric and Nell make me melt. I love them so much. And so I decided to try my hand at writing them. And I know it seems rushed. I'm sorry. :P But oh well. R&amp;R!<p> 


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